Taylor Swift Goes Mobile With Verizon Wireless To Kick Off Her First U.S. Headline Tour

BASKING RIDGE, NJ, and ALEXANDRIA, VA — Verizon Wireless today announced the Taylor Swift Fearless 2009 Tour will provide a number of exclusive interactive activities solely for Verizon Wireless customers. The multi-platinum, award-winning singer/songwriter’s first U.S. headline tour will hit 44 cities between April 23 and Oct. 10, 2009.

One of Swift’s tour stops will be Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, Va. for a private concert. Students won the campus concert by participating in the Verizon Wireless Taylor Swift High School contest and having the highest number of qualified entries of the thousands of participating high schools.

“I’m so excited about my Fearless tour hitting the road, and today’s show at Bishop Ireton is going to be so much fun. I can’t wait to see all of you this year, at the shows and on your phones,” said Taylor Swift.

“Taylor Swift is unequivocally one of the hottest artists in the nation right now,” said Ed Ruth, director of digital content and programming for Verizon. “We are honored to work with Taylor to make her highly-anticipated first U.S. headline tour and the exclusive music developed from our mobile recording studio bus available to customers.”

Txt2Win Contest: Verizon Wireless customers who text “TS” to “8607” will be automatically entered for a chance to win two tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert. Winners will receive their tickets in the form of a bar coded mobile ticket sent to their Verizon Wireless handset and good for the entry of two fans. Mobile ticket winners will have priority access to the show through a VIP Mobile ticketing entrance. To enter for free, visit www.vzwrules.com/ts.

Exclusive Taylor Swift music: Swift will create exclusive music straight from the private on-site Verizon Mobile Recording Studio Bus. Fans will be able to download these exclusive tunes over the air to their mobile phones using Verizon Wireless V CAST Music with Rhapsody.

Green screen fun: Fans can become virtual video stars at every show. With the assistance of green screen technology, fans will appear as if they are performing on stage with Swift as she performs her hit songs “Love Story” and “Picture to Burn.” Video clips of the green screen performances will be sent to participants’ mobile phones to share with friends.

About Taylor Swift19-year-old Taylor Swift has had singles top both the Country and Pop radio charts, and sold more albums in 2008 than any other recording artist, in any genre of music. Taylor’s Fearless album has spent more weeks in the #1 position atop Billboard’s all-genre Top 200 sales chart than any other release this year and is now certified triple platinum. Taylor’s career record sales now top 7 million and she currently holds the Billboard all-genre record for most Top 20 debuts in a calendar year. She is the first artist to have two different albums in the Top 10 on the year-end album chart and the first country artist to top the 2 million mark in paid downloads with three different songs. Her hit single “Love Story” recently became the most downloaded song in country music history and she has three Gold Mobile Ringtones and 14 million downloads thus far. At the age of 14 Taylor became the youngest person ever to be signed as a professional staff songwriter at Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and she released her debut CD when she was 16. Since then, she has received numerous awards, the most recent being 2009’s “Album of the Year” for Fearless by the Academy of Country Music (Taylor was honored as both the artist and producer). This month she was also awarded the Academy of Country Music’s “Crystal Milestone Award” for Outstanding Achievement in Country Music. In 2008, she became the first musician in history to earn the Young Hollywood Award for “Superstar of Tomorrow,” and won an American Music Award, a Teen Choice Award, two CMT Music Awards (including the top honor of Video of the Year), and an Academy of Country Music Award. Taylor has been featured on the covers of many leading publications, including Rolling Stone (twice), Billboard (twice), Allure, Blender, USA Weekend, Seventeen (twice), Redbook, Self, Us Weekly, and Teen Vogue.

About Verizon WirelessVerizon Wireless operates the nation’s most reliable and largest wireless voice and data network, serving more than 86.6 million customers. Headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J., with more than 86,000 employees nationwide, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD). For more information, visit www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.

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